


four a.m. coffee

by hyphae



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-07
Updated: 2017-11-07
Packaged: 2019-01-30 16:45:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12657459
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hyphae/pseuds/hyphae
Summary: Angela makes a new friend.





	four a.m. coffee

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to write a nice interaction between these two, because I think it'd be more interesting if they were on good terms once. I also want F/F friendships and I want Moira to have friends.

Angela hadn't planned on staying up this late today, but lab work always ran long- and if she just worked on her data a little bit more, she could catch her experimental samples as they came out of the analyzer. That was the thought process. Now she's starting to regret it a little bit, as she feels tiredness creeping up on her. The hallway to the room with all of the fancy analysis machines that were shared among labs in this wing was dark. Even in Overwatch HQ, nobody was up at this hour. Tiny lights dotted the edges of the path, telling you where the walls were, and the humming of lab equipment sat in the silence like a fog. It wasn't totally dark. Angela could see a sliver of light along a partially open doorway, flickering slightly. Was someone else awake? Or just forgot to turn off the lights?

She didn't want to intrude, but she was curious, and maybe a little adventurous from the sleep deprivation. So as Angela casually passed by the door, she took a quick peek inside. She could just see, for just a second, the lanky form of Dr. Moira O'Deorain sat at her workstation and illuminated by monitors all around her, staring at the screens. She caught just a glimpse of those intense, sharp features, completely focused on the screens in front of her.

Angela ducked quickly out of the doorway. She had never run into Dr. O'Deorain in person, after learning through the grapevine that she had been recruited by Blackwatch. She had no idea what she was like. She had heard of her as a passionate speaker at conferences, which was equally quoted by her detractors and supporters. She had heard about her funding sources stepping away one by one. She had never seen Moira O'Deorain at the cafeteria, or even passed her in the hallway. Her presence in the building had been like a ghost.

Yet there she was now, tapping away at her computer at 4 am in the morning. Angela went and got her samples, and went back to her lab to stick them in the freezer for tomorrow, and then she made a trip to the break room down the hall.

She had to take a breath before she let herself into the lab. Rather anti-climactically, Dr. O'Deorain didn't seem to notice her, and so Angela was stuck waiting in the doorway with coffee for a minute or two, until something seemed to strike the other scientist as odd, and she lifted her head and saw Angela standing there. Angela smiled weakly. "Coffee?" She said.

"Dr. Ziegler, what a surprise." Dr. O'Deorain's voice was smooth as silk, although her expression was a little bit frazzled. Angela walked over briskly to set down the paper cup.

"I didn't think anybody was working this late as well," Angela said pleasantly, in her polite voice, "And I couldn't just walk by. You must be as tired as I feel." And she gathered herself and prepared to leave Dr. O'Deorain alone to her work.

"I don't think we've been properly introduced," Moira O'Deorain said instead, leaning forward on her elbows and the holographic screens flickering out of sight for a moment. "Friends call me Moira." And she extended her left hand to Angela, her fingers graceful like spiders.

"Angela," She said, and smiled and returned the left-handed shake. "My lab's just down the hall, although I'm all over the place most of the time. I'm surprised we haven't run into each other."

"Ah, yes, this infernal work leaves me practically nocturnal. It's a shame." Moira extended both her arms back in a stretch, and then she reached for the cup of coffee.

Angela leaned on the edge of the desk and watched as she took a sip. "I hope it's alright. I had to guess. Two creams and two sugars is mine, I figured it was a safe bet."

"Is that right." Moira looked pensive as she sipped, and didn't say anything beyond that. Angela inferred that this was not how Moira takes her coffee, and checked off a mental checkbox in her head.

She set her fingers against the surface of the desk. "Well, I won't interrupt your work for too much longer. Have a good night, Doctor- ah, Moira." It still felt strange to be familiar with someone wreathed in controversy as to be sort of a celebrity.

"Good night, Angela." Moira's voice was smooth as ever, it seemed like the same problem did not apply to her. "Thank you again for the coffee. It's very thoughtful." She smiled cheerfully and waved with that same left hand as Angela quietly shut the door to its previous state of ajar behind her.

Moira had been really nice. Angela had felt bad that the newspapers and journals had been so rude to her, back when her infamous paper was still freshly out in the world, and she was glad to have her instincts validated. Moira had seemed like a genuinely nice person to be around.

\--

The next time her work ran late, Angela was heading out of the lab when she saw that sliver of light and recalled the entire encounter with Moira, and it just felt wrong in that moment to leave without dropping by. And so for the second time, Angela showed up in the doorway with coffee.

Moira noticed her quicker this time. "Angela!" she said, looking up from her screens. It made Angela's heart warm, for a second, to be called so enthusiastically like that.

"I was in the area again, thought I'd drop by," Angela said and smiled and set her cup down on the desk.

"I'm very glad you did," Moira said, and reached for the coffee. Angela looked on eagerly. When she took a sip, her expression was inscrutable, still perfectly composed and polite, and Angela felt a twinge of disappointment. "Black," Moira said. "That's different."

"Yes, well, when you didn't like cream and sugar, it was the logical thing to try next," Angela explained, then quickly blushed from the explanation. "I'm sorry, I don't mean to make a game out of it."

"No, no, I think it's sweet," Moira said, and the familiarity of the adjective took Angela by surprise so much that she had to smile. "How's your work going, Angela?" Moira sipped at her drink, and Angela felt some satisfaction that Moira felt comfortable enough to have a chat with her, at 2 am in the morning.

"The usual, frustrating," Angela said, settling herself against the edge of Moira's desk and looking out into the rest of her lab. "I'm testing a sort of manganese based nanoparticle, but the results in cell culture aren't really what I hoped. I'll have to tweak the formulation." Moira's equipment all looked extensively modified, pieces stuck together with wires and cables. Angela was honestly impressed. It took a dedicated scientist and one very entrenched in their work to exhibit this level of engineering expertise over their tools. "I have a few ideas of how to move forward. I'm sure it'll work out in the end." She ended, cheerfully.

"Mm. Well, good luck to you. I know you have your hands full with Overwatch as well. You must be keeping busy."

"Don't I know it," Angela laughed.

"My work, meanwhile," and Moira tapped a few keys at that, and some lines on the graphs on the screen shifted into some more attractive shapes, "is progressing promisingly. I've caught a few lucky breaks within the past weeks. Let's hope that my luck will be contagious."

Angela looked at the graphs on the screen, and at the equipment scattered around the lab. She wondered if it was too forward to bring up, but it _was_ early in the morning, so maybe she'd be pardoned. And Moira had been nothing but lovely to her. "I always thought the outcry around your autonomous genetic modification proposal was overstated," she said. "The genetic basis of so many modern diseases are well known. The technology could save millions. The scientific community acted as though you had personally proposed human experimentation."

She was anxious at Moira's reaction, and so she overlooked when Moira started drumming the fingers of her right hand, which had always been partially hidden by the sleeve of her lab coat. She was reassured by the way Moira's eyes lit up at her words, one clear as the sky and the other bright like fire. "Technology is just a tool," Moira said in the tone of someone who's just realized she had an enthusiastic audience. "The nature of technology is to advance. It can bring such great gifts along with its challenges. But who are we if we're not up to the task of facing those challenges?"

"Exactly!" Angela said. "I completely agree." She was thrilled. Moira was a genius, and they had connected over something they both agreed upon. Angela knew in her heart that Moira wasn't the wayward lunatic everybody else thought, and that she was in fact very aware of the dangers of unchecked technology; she was just prepared to help the world deal with them, just like Angela wanted to. She was sure of it.

\---

The next time, it was Moira standing in the door of her lab in the early hours of the morning. Angela looked up in surprise. Moira set down two cups of coffee before them. The one she pushed toward Angela, and which Angela accepted and took a sip from automatically, still in shock at Moira's sudden appearance, was two creams and two sugars. "You remembered!" Angela said.

"You look tired," Moira said, settling comfortably onto one of the chairs in Angela's lab that sat in the periphery of her desk terminal. "Tell me what ails you."

Angela looked toward her monitors with a worried expression. "Well," she said, "Overwatch is supposed to be a task force to respond to the world's emergent situations, and I've usually been comfortable sending medical relief - but I just think, given the previous crisis that we were involved in, it'd be a bad idea to have a hand in the current conflict, it's just not an ethical thing to do considering the circumstances... I'm trying to think of how to draft this email." She leaned back with her fingers on her temples.

Moira looked pensive. "That sounds difficult," she said after a pause. "I've never been good with that kind of... people problems," she gestured with her left hand in the air. "To tell you the truth, it all confounds me a little bit. It's why I was drawn to science when I was young. A bit fewer variables to work with."

Angela smiled. "I was like that myself, you know."

"That's hard to believe."

"No, it's true. I didn't know I wanted to become a doctor when I was a child. For me it was so much more about the wonder at the building blocks of life and all that. It was when I gradually grew older, that I realized that people... who they are, what they do, why they fight, and how to do the greatest good by them, that's the biggest scientific mystery of all. People are so fascinating, and I love all of them so much."

Moira seemed to ruminate on this for a second. Then she shook her head. "It's a little bit beyond me," she chuckled. "I supposed I admire that about you, Angela. That we are so similar in many ways, and yet different."

Angela steepled her fingers over her coffee. She was a little bit disappointed that her heartfelt message hadn't gotten through, but she had just been complimented, so she was glowing a little bit too.

Moira raised her cup. "By the way," she said, "it's black, with three sugars."

"I'll remember that for next time," Angela said, smiling.


End file.
